Hi all, I thought it would be fun to show you all how I have been getting on with my gorgeous Erin Condren Pink / Gold Life Planner, so I made a video showing you how I have been using it and what I think of it after my first month or so of planning in it. I only really use my planner for business – working out what videos and posts I want to make and the schedule of those to be made, edited, written, photographed, etc plus all my social media, and of course my website and the jobs that need to be done that.

I’m naturally a very disorganised person but with so much stuff on the go I needed to get some sort of system in place to help my head not to explode with trying to remember all the jobs I needed to do, all the ideas I had for future projects, keeping up with the latest crafty news etc etc. Oh I should also add that I have a memory of a goldfish! Actually surprisingly useful attribute to me in my criminal law days as you have so much info to go through and you have to learn to read it, digest it, use what you need, then get rid of it all ready for the next case! I tried lots of electronic diary and reminders etc but it wasn’t in front of me, and being an academic I like to see stuff, and then I can look at in detail but also as the big picture.

So using my academic nature I researched and this led me to my Filofax, which I love. I set it up in a way that I thought would work for me, having researched thoroughly how others were using theirs and then taking the all the bits that I thought would be what I needed and incorporating it in my Filofax. Pretty quickly there were minor adjustments but it was working good for me. However I didn’t even have a full year in there, but with all the other sections I had created it was bulging at the seams. So when Erin kindly gifted me a planner I thought it would be a perfect compliment to my Filofax. I would use the EC planner for my daily diary planning and the Filofax for all the rest of the sections I had for project planning and the like – check out my Filofax video if you would like to see how I separated it all out.

However as is often the way, that was a good plan that didn’t quite come off. I failed to take into account one thing – how much I would love this EC planner! it showed me just how much I had overcomplicated things with all my different sections, and that I could achieve the same result with so much less going on in the planner. This made the whole thing more streamlined and simple to use, which in turn helps me see the big picture but all the little details too.

I am now already eagerly awaiting the launch of the new planners which are coming out very soon – I will report on those here for you. But also I am interested in getting the address book and note book too. The Addy book is because I have this big fear of losing all the electronic data with all the info on contacts I have got in the industry and are worth their weight in gold to me. As for the note book, although the planner has note pages in it, I wanted to use that literally for little notes to self, but a note book I would like to use to project plan on big projects and ideas and giving me space to break them down into smaller parts. For example the silhouette seminar started life in the centre of a page in a little drawn cloud, off which I drew out lines with different ideas of things that I felt needed to be covered in the series. This then helps me map out the idea from a large general concept to the individual topics.

Anyway I won’t say much more about how I used the planner as that is covered in the video, which by the way I must say please excuse the sound, although you will hear me fine, it was such a nice day I filmed in the garden hoping that it would really show off the loveliness of the cover and gold etc. However there was what i thought was a gentle breeze which sounds like a howling gale at times. But as I said you won’t not hear me as I had a play with the audio in editing and enhanced myself lol!

Finally to say that at the bottom of this post is a EC logo which is a link to give you a $10 discount of your first purchase with Erin. So if you become all inspired by the video and want your own planner then don’t forget to use the coupon. However also bear in mind planners will not be back in stock till the launch of the next collection on the 2nd June 2014. Hope you enjoy the video